It'll be a long hard slog out of the doldrums Mr Brown

After the fanfare from Gordon Brown heralding the end of the recession, if that is what it is, the news turned out to be a damp squib.

Yes, the British economy did grow fractionally in the final few months of last year but the 0.1 per cent expansion - the first since early 2008 - looks so fragile that there must be serious questions as to whether it can be sustained.

It is nothing like the kind of lift-off which Labour ministers must have been praying for to launch their election campaign.

The marginal rise in growth barely fulfils Alistair Darling's oft-repeated promise of a recovery by the turn of the year.

Even so, after two horrendous years which saw 6 per cent wiped off output, the financial system on the brink of collapse and unemployment surge to 2.5million, any signs of recovery will seem blessed relief.

But as Martin Weale, of the respected National Institute of Economic & Social Research, points out, a rise of 0.1 per cent is not regarded as statistically significant.

Indeed, when the figures are revised it is possible that national output fell by a small amount in the final three months of the year.

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What is clear is that were it not for the car scrappage scheme, it is very unlikely that there would be any revival at all.

Add to that the fact that retail sales were artificially supported
by the 2.5 point cut in VAT and the picture becomes more hazy.

The truth is that in the final months of 2009, buyers of big
ticket items such as fridges and flat screen televisions brought their
purchases forward to avoid the VAT rise.

Hazy: The fact that retail sales were artificially supported by the 2.5 point cut in VAT makes the economy's growth figures less clear

This means that high street sales will dramatically lose momentum in the current quarter - even if the downturn might be softened because retailers such as Tesco did not immediately pass on the tax rise.

What is really worrying for the Government is that the service sector, which represents the larger part of the British economy and has been the main driver of growth in recent times, is still spluttering.

The official figures show it expanded by just 0.1 per cent against the 0.5 or 0.6 per cent predicted by many business surveys.

Industry, though, did put up a better performance, with a 0.1 per cent improvement in output.

But this is not the runaway export growth many had hoped for given the 20 per cent devaluation of the pound against the currencies of our major trading partners and the recovery in our big export markets.

As the global economy emerges from recession, the great challenge for all governments is to find the right moment to remove the financial stimuli supporting global economies.

Or, as a former Federal Reserve chairman observed, it's about finding the correct time to take away the punch bowl.

At present, the economy is being propped up by record levels of public spending, with borrowing heading toward £180billion in the 2009-10 fiscal year.

Another support is the Bank of England's programme of quantitative easing, which has so far force-fed the financial system with £200billion of extra money.

Most significantly of all, official interest rates, which guide the cost of borrowing throughout the economy, have been held at just 0.5 per cent.

Such a level might prove hard to maintain if inflation worsens in the first half of the year amid higher fuel and commodity prices.

Economic history shows that recoveries rarely run smoothly. In the Great Depression of the 1930s there were several quarters of buoyant upturn before the economy sunk back again into recession, creating what we now call the 'double dip'.

Similar false starts were seen in the two recessions of the 1970s while during the last major downturn of 1990-93, the improvement was painfully slow.

There is reason to believe it will be a long, hard slog out of the doldrums for Britain.

The biggest challenge, for whoever is in power, will be dealing with the public finances. The hard facts are that we are spending £4 for every £3 raised in taxes - a situation which cannot be sustained.

Failure to seriously address the problem of a bloated public sector will only end in disaster. Debt interest payments are surging and reached £40billion in the last financial year.

Meanwhile, credit rating agencies (which determine how much the Government must pay for its borrowings) are keeping a close eye on plans to cut spending.

The big question is whether, once the stimulus provided by an expanding public sector is withdrawn, the wealth-creating part of the economy will pick up the slack. This will be very tricky to pull off.

Britain's last best hope lies in a weak pound which gives us a competitive edge over our EU partners.

Optimists point to the fact that every UK recovery of modern times - including that engineered by Ken Clarke under the last Tory administration - has followed a fall in the value of the pound.

But business will not be able to respond to this opportunity if suffocated by heavy taxes and red tape.

Indeed, this is one of the many reasons why the International Monetary Fund is still gloomy about Britain's ability to pick itself up off the floor.